Enough

God bless them, their families, and all of us.

When are we going to learn? Fucking NRA.

WTF is going on here? This doesn’t happen in New Zealand, no?

CBS: 27 dead, including 18 kids.

@nojo: I had been on a conference call and off the tubes. When I came back to my desk and clicked to the NYT, I started to retch. What the fuck is wrong with us? I hate people.

It’s gray and drizzly and overcast and cold. I just want to go back to bed and put on some Bach and snuggle with the cat.

@SanFranLefty: I’m leaving work in 20 minutes and not a moment too soon. My eyes are tearing up. I’m going to be curling up with the cat and the dog soon enough myself.

I’m physically ill over this. Holy fucking shit, that’s all I got.

White House spokesbot Jay Carney:

What I said is, today is not the day, I believe as a father, a day to engage in the usual Washington policy debates. I think that that they will come, but today of not that day, especially as we are awaiting more information about the situation in Connecticut.

Yes, let’s wait until the next mass shooting. We’ll be calmer then.

This. So this: “I want to see Wayne LaPierre’s head stuck on a pike.”

@rptrcub: If only that were the extent of it.

Hey, they shot Reagan, nothing happened. Unless you count the Brady Bill. Which took a dozen years.

Two shooters? One shooter’s parent also shot?

@rptrcub: Your status update on the Book of Faces about your problems seeming inconsequential right about now summed it all up.
@Mistress Cynica: Yep, “What the fuck” seems to be all that is coming out of my mouth.
@Dodgerblue: Shooter was the father of a student. Custody dispute? He sure showed his ex.

@SanFranLefty: CBS: Gunman’s mother was a teacher at the school. Also being reported that gunman was 20.

@Dodgerblue: NBC: Shooter’s parent found shot at home. Unclear whether that’s the father.

NYT: “The shooting ranks among the worst in recent United States history.”

Among.

Because you need a statistician to keep track.

@nojo: CBS: shooter’s mother was a teacher at the school and was killed there.

@SanFranLefty: May be weirder than that. This may be the shooter’s FB page: http://www.facebook.com/rlanza

@nojo: One stat I saw tossed around on Twitter (so consider the source): there have been 27 US school shootings since Columbine, only 14 in the rest of the world combined. Note that only counts school shootings. We actually need sub-categories.

Important Things Legally Banned This Week: Commercials being louder than TV shows.

@Mistress Cynica: BBC says the only US school shooting with higher numbers is Virginia Tech. Ugh. The rest of the world is horrified by the US and the fucking machine guns. I am horrified by the US.

@Mistress Cynica: And as discussed earlier this week, there were at least two school shootings before Columbine. Columbine got the attention because it wasn’t redneck or working-class.

And today? Connecticut.

The grim count keeps going up – now 22 kids dead, 29 total.

I really don’t feel like writing a brief today.

@SanFranLefty: Me neither. Think I’ll go home soon and curl up under a blankie.

Interestingly, NPR doesn’t mention a second shooter. It seems like an important point. One guy shooting up a school is awful, but could be laid at the feet of mental illness. Two guys shooting up a school is the kind of premeditated awful that I can’t even encompass.

Noj, sounds like there are going to be protests this afternoon on your point of, “No, now is exactly the time to talk about this.”

@Dodgerblue: Is that confirmed? Misattributed Facebook pages are pretty common at moments like these.

Like, say, the other Ryan Lanza on Twitter:

so aperently im getting spammed bc someone with the same name as me killed some ppl… wtf?

And all I have to deal with is a Wingnut Senator.

@IanJ: I’m hearing about White House protests scheduled for 4:30-ish.

But I’m deeply cynical about this. If not in the fucking past thirty years, when?

Oh for fuck’s sake.

@nojo: If not a classroom of 5-year-olds, when?

@ManchuCandidate: I couldn’t figure out how else to categorize the post.

Multiple victim shootings happen more or less weekly in the US–it’s only the really horrific ones that even make the news. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence keeps a running list. Their site has crashed today due to high traffic.

http://bradycenter.org/

The President nearly broke down several times during his statement, wiped away tears, and at least mentioned that we have to take steps to stop these shootings, no matter the politics.

@nojo: Not confirmed, but the school and residence locations appear to check out. Apparently this guy’s site, whoever it is, is down now.

Did you see Obama’s statement? I can’t even talk about it.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

We’re a right-wing country ruled by our worst citizens.

@SanFranLefty: It’s really a bitch when eighteen kids get murdered and people make a fuss about it.

@SanFranLefty: There’s “Second-Amendment Martyrs”, but that sets off some issues among Rural-ish Stinquers.

@Dodgerblue: And now the NY Post is saying it’s Adam Lanza. Such is breaking news.

No worries, t-minus 7 days til we’re done with this whole humanity thing anyway, per the Mayans. I say good riddance.

@Dodgerblue: Not yet. I suspect it will slay me. Every news site I’ve gone on that is streaming O is getting overheated and crashing.

@SanFranLefty: It will. Don’t watch it from work. Remember, this guy has two young daughters.

@flippin eck: Agree.

Obama doesn’t care, Congress doesn’t care, and the NRA certainly doesn’t care. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.

@¡Andrew!: I was about to say that Obama’s tears are insufficient to the moment, but you covered it. I’ll await the serious proposal.

Police: Twenty kids dead.

@nojo: When the horrid, sadistic, hate-crazed, old white people start getting shot up, then maybe we’ll get reasonable gun control laws, but until someone gives the leaders at NRA headquarters an Abe Lincoln scalp massage, it ain’t gonna happen.

Obama:

As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago — these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

Go ahead. You first.

@nojo: Right? I’ll believe it when I see it. If you think this won’t take a back seat to the fucking eminently fixable financial cliff, you’ve got another think coming.

Beating Chris Rock by six years, Pat Moynihan proposed a bullet tax in 1993. His point: Guns last forever.

“On the other hand, we have only a three-year supply of ammunition.”

His solution: Increase the tax on bullets. He wouldn’t raise the tax on ammunition typically used for target shooting or hunting. But he proposed exorbitant taxes on hollow-tipped bullets designed to penetrate armor and cause devastating damage.

“Ten thousand percent,” Mr. Moynihan said.

That would have made the tax on a 20-cartridge pack of those bullets $1,500. “Guns don’t kill people; bullets do,” said Senator Moynihan, a Democrat who died in 2003.

President Clinton, responding to the Bullet Tax:

Sen. Moyihan makes an important connection that I’ve been trying to highlight as well, about the enormous health care costs we pay because of violence — and in particular, gun violence. Every weekend, emergency rooms across the country are filled with people who’ve been cut up or shot up. We spend over $4 billion a year on this problem, and sometimes we spend half a million dollars or more to fix somebody who was shot with a $35 handgun and a $5 box of bullets.

The context of Moynihan’s Bullet Tax? Hillarycare.

Obama proposed a 500-percent ammo-tax increase in 1999. This has not gone unnoticed by wingnuts over the years.

Ammo tax also proposed in Chicago this year, laughed off the stage:

But Illinois State Rifle Association Executive Director Richard Pearson says the legislation would impact registered, law-abiding gun owners, instead of those who commit crimes with guns.

Two thoughts:

1. Moynihan’s ammo tax would have been limited to nonsporting uses.

2. If you’re worried about paying for the indiscretion of others, drop your car insurance.

OK. So I reckon that the shooter was not crazy. Was not a monster. Was one of us who took a wrong turn. Who believed the story he told himself instead of the story we tell each other. Spent a long time planning this – I would imagine that the planning is profoundly satisfying and the execution almost anti-climactic. Of course by the time you realize that you’ve already done it and there’s no going back. I don’t see why it’s not possible to be pro hunting and anti assault weapons.

I’ve been driving about a lot today and was listening to Fox radio for part of the time. Was bemused by one Keith Ablow, self-proclaimed scientist (personally I reckon that comparing psychiatry to real science like physics is like comparing dog shit to cement), laying the blame at the feet of reality TV and video games, both indicators of the current lack of respect we have for each other: this from a Fox News staple pundit. I’m only thankful he didn’t blame us gays – though that will come.

I think the president’s spokesman is right: today is not the time to start politicking.

Let today’s event speak for itself.

Let the children speak tomorrow.

I just defriended or blocked on the Book of Faces a good number of people I grew up with who are saying this happened because we took prayer out of schools and that we need more cops at schools.

@SanFranLefty: That will be how the right frames it.

@SanFranLefty: Oh, jeez…

@Benedick: Problem is, it’s always too soon. It’s never the right moment. It’s always Thanksgiving in America, and we’re not supposed to talk about it at the table.

Always.

And then it happens again.

@Benedick: He’s the worst kind of monster: a human being who neglected his responsibility to nurture and protect children in order to advance a selfish agenda, whatever it was. There will be no Christmas for those children, or their families, ever again. There will be no graduation, no first kiss, no wedding, nothing in this life. If that doesn’t make you a monster, I don’t know what would.

It’s amazing how much the right wants to talk around this problem: video games and movies aren’t the problem; the ready availability of weapons and ammo designed only to kill people is.

I cannot believe these gun nuts. “Oh we need guns to protect out 90 year old grandmothers from being raped”

Yeah like Grandma is going to be able to get to the phone, call you and your gun to come over and shoot said rapist before the rape is committed?

Or “Oh some one will break into my home” Yeah right. How many family members have been shot dead as suspected home invaders?

If it’s in the home, then it’s hands, feet and teeth. No Mercy. Thumbs in the eyes, kick out the knees, punch the throat and bite anything you can get you teeth on. Fucking gun nuts putting up straw-man arguments should be be challenged and kicked in the nuts. Fuck ’em.

Guns are designed to kill and should be restricted.

“Oh but cars kill more people than guns!” Fuck Off. Cars are 1) not designed to kill. And 2) You can’t kill 27 people with a car in the same time as it takes to kill 27 people with a gun.

As for banning cutlery? How many dozens of people have been killed with a knife and fork, or spork, or splayde, or cake knife?

Fuck you NRA! This is at your blood soaked door step. You allowed this to happen. Hang your fucking head in shame and do not say “If the children had guns… ” Because kids with guns means dead kids. Fuck you. Fuck Charlton Heston, fuck guns and fuck you until your arse bleeds.

Guns are designed to kill and should therefore be restricted. Hand in your NRA membership card in disgust at allowing this tragedy to happen.

Castrate the NRA!

Okay, let’s straighten this out…

Adam Lanza is the shooter.

Ryan Lanza is his older brother, being questioned by police.

Guns found at scene: Glock, Sig Sauer, .223 rifle. Rifle found in car trunk. Pistols found inside the school.

@SanFranLefty: That school-prayer line? Huckabee.

@nojo: If only someone would express their Second Amendment rights by emptying a clip into the Huckster’s face.

Which begs the question: Why do these things never happen to the people who totally have it coming?

@nojo: I have a hard time restraining my inner nerd in this conversation. Correction for Mr. Moynihan: hollow-tipped bullets are specifically useless against body armor, although they’re awful against unarmored people. Tax away, but get your facts straight.

@IanJ: In Pat’s defense, he’s dead.

But you’re right about keeping facts straight: There was a photo of a tricked-out .223 making the rounds earlier today. If that never left the trunk, we’re left with the pistols (and however they were stocked).

Hollowpoints aside, the bullet-tax proposal presumes we can adequately distinguish between “sporting” and non-sporting ammo. Unless, of course, we can’t. And there I’m well beyond my competence.

The Well-Meaning Neighbor thinks we need more protection. Around kindergartens. Also, what kind of freak would do this?

And that’s where we’re at: Even the Well-Meaning Neighbor can’t think of better gun-control as a solution to the problem of mass shootings.

@nojo: Yeah, that’d be really hard to argue in some cases.

It’s troubling for me with this kind of thing because while I want to correct people, it’s never really appreciated, although it’s vital to the discussion. The one that’s bugging me today is people freaking out over “semi-automatic” guns. There are, broadly speaking, three types of actions on firearms: manual (pump, lever, bolt action), semi-automatic (99% of pistols and ~50% of rifles) and fully-automatic. The first two types are one shot per trigger pull, and are generally legal throughout the US. Fully-automatic firearms fire repeatedly as long as the trigger is held down, and are generally not legal (this is a complicated thing, though, and fully-automatic firearms are available and legal in some limited situations; I don’t pretend to understand the laws around that).

The trouble is that people conflate semi-automatic and fully-automatic, so that even when a journalist is scrupulously correct in their descriptions (remember that 99% of pistols are semi-automatic, although strictly speaking the term doesn’t apply to revolvers), there’s still this huge outcry, as if the shooter was somehow able to legally purchase a machine pistol.

I’m all for setting up registrations or whatever. But it’ll never happen, and for every person who is vocally for gun control, there’s another person who is dead set against it. Until we get lobbying money and campaign contributions out of politics, this isn’t an issue we can reasonably expect to make any progress on.

I don’t pretend to believe anything at all will be done to change things. The Onion, as usual, puts it best: Fuck Everything.

Michael Bloomberg’s statement:

With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their ABC’s are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”

@IanJ: Can’t speak for Our Fellow Americans, but I certainly appreciate the specificity. If we want to solve a problem, it helps to know what the problem is.

That, of course, opens up the discussion to distraction: Whether the problem is not guns (or ammo) at all, but idiots with guns. And all I can say is that some idiot armed to the teeth with ninja stars wouldn’t have been as effective.

Why do we have to reinvent the wheel? Why can’t we look at how guns are regulated and controlled in other countries? Makes sense to me, but I’m an islamofascistcommie soshalist, so there you go.

@nojo: True enough. My opinion is that the problem is ridiculously complex. An increasingly disconnected society is losing its ability to provide a social safety net (both in terms of governmental support, and in terms of family and friends). Mental illness is not treated when it should be, and is instead left to courts to deal with. Guns are ridiculously available, and Mother Jones’ report on mass shootings says that most of the shooters got their guns legally. Ammunition is ridiculously available, and in some configurations that just don’t make sense. Video games, movies, and TV all portray violence, and frequently gun violence, as an obvious and acceptable de facto reaction to many situations. Educational effectiveness has been waning for decades. Societal belief in harmful ideologies seems to be at an all-time high.

Put all that together, and it’s amazing there aren’t more mass shootings.

But for all that, I know I (and probably RML, although I hesitate to speak for him) will be happy to divide and subdivide the anatomy and taxonomy of guns, and what they can and can’t do, should anyone have any questions.

I’ll be spending part of my evening tonight composing a letter to my various Congressional delegates and Obama, urging them to work on increasing mental health funding, as well as working toward at least enforcement of the laws we already have around gun control, if not new proposals for registration, safe storage/trigger locks, and anything else that seems reasonable*.

* Ha ha.

@IanJ: On my way to the bank this afternoon, I saw three kids playing with toy guns, hiding behind trees and shooting at each other. Trying not to be overly sensitive, but it was rather chilling.

@Mistress Cynica: what’s odd about children is that if they don’t have toy guns, they will pick up sticks and pretend they are guns. I’ve seen it in my nephews as young as two.

Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, I’m afraid…

@Mistress Cynica: Being a Former Boychild who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, I happily participated in my share of Mock-Violent Role-Playing. (Agonized slo-mo shooting deaths are fun!) I won’t necessarily say it’s in our nature as Male Critters, but I wouldn’t extrapolate much from it, either. Most of us grow up.

Same reason I have issues with Media Cassandras who want to tame things for kids. I grew up in the era they were responding to — hours of television each day — and somehow, I survived unscathed.

Well, except for all these decrepit pop-culture references I can’t do anything with…

@nojo: H.R. Puffinstuff taught me it was good to get high. Probably one of the best life lessons I ever learned…

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Y’know, that never crossed my mind at the time, and by the time it was brought to my attention, I already had my own excuses.

Yes, I was slow. Kids could have been stoned all around me in high school, and I would have just thought they were fun.

@nojo: They were.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: As I learned years later. My youthful guilelessness was adorable.

@nojo: @Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Clearly you weren’t beaten enough.

@Benedick: There’s never enough, Daddy.

Remember this kid?

It’s all tragic. But who gets the press? This epidemic is mostly ignored until it isn’t a NIMBY issue. And then we forget about it again.

Kinda like how “the outside world” viewed the “Gay Cancer” epidemic until, SURPRISE! ANYONE can contract HIV! DERP

Membership in the majority has its privileges.

@SanFranLefty: Aaaaannnddd, I knew it was going to happen, first post by a high school classmate turned overweight Rush listener saying that liberals have no right to remember or mourn the dead first graders because we don’t mourn the dead babies aborted each year.

Stab! Stab! Stab! Martini! Hide! Unfriend! Block!

/fuck. me. gently. with. a. chain. saw.

(Where is Flying ChainSaw, BTW? I’ve been waiting for him to share his thoughts about what he’d do to Wayne LaPierre, but I think CheapBoy was channeling him. Still, FCS, I’m putting up the bat-signal for you.)

And my mother tries to guilt me into coming to TeXas at Xmas by saying “But you can see all your friends from high school, too.” Ugh. No. Funny, the ones I want to see don’t live in Texas, or if they live in Texas, they live in Austin.

@JNOV: Yes, of course I remember him. Who could ever forget? I don’t think anyone around here will.

@SanFranLefty: I’m not talking about “around here” specifically. I’m talking about the world. Not that I’ve seen anyone other than those cute little affluent and presumed white kids mentioned. But I could have missed some comments. I just stopped by to see what was up and what was mentioned.

@JNOV: Believe me, I am aware of all of the black and brown kids mowed down in Oakland and EPA and South San Jose and in Richmond and in the Bayview and the Western Addition. And it breaks my heart.

And it also breaks my heart that there are thousands of kids that have been slaughtered in Syria by their beserk leader. And that there are hundreds and thousands of kids who have died at the other end of a gun or drone controlled by our troops. But a human being can only be capable of focusing on so many things at once, or she will completely lose her mind. The way that I don’t lose my mind on a daily or weekly basis by all of the crippling sorrow and pain around me is that I put one foot in front of the other, and I hope that each day I live I can do something that makes a positive impact in someone else’s life. Even if all I can manage is to tell the old Chinese woman selling the Chronicle outside the Ferry Building to stay warm and keep the change, I can’t judge myself for not fixing all the world’s problems in a day or a lifetime.

I live by the campsite rule. Make the world (or your campsite) less shitty than it was when you got there. Even if it’s the smallest thing one day at a time, that’s better than a lot of people in the world who thrive on shitting on others.

So perhaps yes, nobody around here immediately commented and said “But what about the children in Syria?” or “What about the children in Chicago/DC/Orlando?” But you shouldn’t so flippantly assume that people – here, or in the world – don’t care or know about these things. There’s only so much sorrow you can swallow on a given day. Mourning these “little affluent and presumed white kids” (BTW, you might want to check out the NYT to learn about the kids before judging the children who were murdered) doesn’t mean we don’t mourn the black and brown kids around the world who are shot and killed one at a time.

@SanFranLefty: Jesus, Lefty. Months ago I was asking for articles on Syria. ::crickets::

I haven’t been around for awhile, I’ve been busy preening, but I’m not indicting anyone, and I don’t need a lecture about the tragic inequities of the world.

Let’s put it this way: I didn’t come here to induce White Shame if that’s the underlying umbrage you’re taking with and reading into my comments. I have no control over anyone but myself, and I sure don’t have control over how people feel, nor am I responsible.

Sure we can look at all of it and see the interwoven pieces of tragedy no matter where it occurs, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit idly by while you accuse me of judging those slain children. It’s their fault they were at school, a supposedly safe place? I thought you knew me better.

@JNOV: I don’t think Lefty said anything of the kind. You’re among friends here, hon.

@JNOV: More class than race. Why didn’t the two school shootings before Columbine get the name-brand attention? One was rednecks, the other working-class. (I lived at the other end of the local highway from the Springfield shooting.) It didn’t become a national crisis until it happened to the nice kids.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Sometimes.

And this: (BTW, you might want to check out the NYT to learn about the kids before [ahem] judging the children who were murdered)

I have read about them, and to accuse me of judging their circumstances of birth…if I do so, it would be incredibly hypocritical as no one should be judged in such a way.

I know I swooped in here this evening, but my point that has been lost in the collective anguish is that this kind of stuff is what makes the news, not my cousin being killed in a home invasion while he babysat his little sister. He was 15.

This blog isn’t news — it’s more commentary in my opinion, and I like that. All I was trying to say, and maybe it was lost in agony and grief, is that gun violence is a fucking epidemic, but it is largely ignored until something of this magnitude occurs.

There were comments about guns, gun control, what’s behind all this, etc., and those conversations were interesting. But what I found missing is that like so many social issues, until the fear that It Could Happen Anywhere strikes a certain demographic, people don’t have that “Oh, shit” reaction that most of us live with daily.

The police were at my apt complex again last night. Two people have been murdered here since August. A man in the neighboring building was involved in a stand off with the police last summer. That’s my reality. That’s many people’s reality.

Terrorism is scary because you never know what’s going to happen and where, so you live in a constant state of heightened awareness, or you accept your fate because no one else seems to care.

When people delude themselves into thinking that they are safe because they live somewhere “safe” and their kids go to “good” schools, and they play soccer and softball, etc., they are lulled into a false sense of security. When people awaken to the fact that violence, especially gun violence, is everywhere, they wonder how it could happen in their small “safe” nook of the world, and that’s when it’s front page news on the NYT.

@nojo: Yes. Socio-economic for sure. Just like a missing blond rich white girl will get more attention from the police and community than a missing poor white boy or brown boy or girl.

It’s what we do.

@JNOV: Please explain how “cute little affluent and presumed white kids mentioned” isn’t judgy?

@SanFranLefty: They’re being portrayed in the media as cute little affluent, and I put in the “presumed white,” kids.

Please explain how that’s a judgment [ETA] of the victims? It’s a judgment of the media.

@JNOV: She may have used those words, but she wasn’t talking about judging the circumstances of their birth exactly, she was talking about knowing exactly who you were talking about. In ther words, presupposing that they were affluent and white, not that they deserved what they got.

ADD: Or maybe I should just let Lefty speak for herself. Play nice, though, guys.

ADD ADD: Is the media really presenting them as “cute”? Or, come to think of it, “white”? I’m not sure this is a case of Natalie Holliway syndrome exactly, it was a mass slaying of kindergarders, which is big news no matter who they were. Not to take away from the fact that disadvantaged children of color are treated as disposable in the media at all… I just think this crime was so extreme and senseless that it actually warranted the attention it got.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Exactly. I mean, watch the video on this page, “Newtown’s Appeal”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/for-newtown-horror-halts-a-season-of-celebration.html?hp&_r=1&

It’s just incredibly sad having an event like this happen in a place like this.

ETA: What makes that place so special? Oh, right…

@JNOV: Could it be that it’s a sleepy, safe, small town? If you look for the devil you’ll fnd him in your slippers every day, hon.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Yes, that’s my point.

Have some 2010 census demographics:

http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/06470/zip-code-06470-2010-census.asp

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: I’m not looking for the devil, hon.

All places are special, just some are more special than others.

@JNOV: it’s a meta-whatsis. You know, a simirillion. I just meant that racism is so prevalent in the media that sometimes we assume it’s there when it isn’t. Like the devil. In my slippers.

@JNOV: You know what’s interesting about that reference? George Orwell said that Americans always read it the wrong way. In other words, we assume that being equal elevates one, so we read that as the pigs on the farm considering themselves better – more equal- than the other animals.

Orwell meant it the other way. The rest of the animals were more equal- “worse than”- the pigs. I always thought that an interesting culture clash.

God I am so stoned.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Take race out and follow the money, hon. Because a Normal Rockwell Town picks The Help up at the station.

Estimated median household income in 2009: $109,767 (it was $86,553 in 2000)
Newtown: $109,767
Connecticut: $67,034
Estimated per capita income in 2009: $43,820

@JNOV: But you are missing my point. If this guy had done it in inner-city Detroit there still would have been this hue and cry, and rightfully so. We’re talking about dead five- and six-year-olds here.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: That’s how I meant it; it’s not special. In fact, it’s worse because people think it’s better. No one is immune, BUT when a super special place has an incident like this, we’re all so shocked it happened there.

Christ. Does any sober person understand me?

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: So, wait. Are we putting race back into play? Because if we are, we’d have some strange fucking fruit on Christmas trees right now if a black guy had been the shooter.

KIDS GET SHOT IN DETROIT EVERYDAY. It’s just not on a mass murder scale. It’s a whimper. Shall I hunt down the per capita number of child murders in MI vs. CT?

@JNOV: I’m not that stoned, I know what you mean. I’ve been smoking this shit since I was twelve, and my mom still makes brownies every year at Christmas. I’m saying that you’re mistaken. This could have happened in South Central L.A. and we’d still be horrified. Because it is just that horrific.

@JNOV: They were all in one room. It was a kindergarten. Aside from being manifestly horrible, those two things make it guaranteed front page news. Even if it had happened in Iceland.

Better yet, let me look up violent crime in Chester, PA. The per capita violent crime rate there is higher than Camden, NJ.

I almost went to grad school to be a demographer. One thing I learned when I spent a summer at the Population Studies Center at Penn was that if a black male makes it to 23 years old, his life expectancy is almost the same as a white male born in the same year. 23 is the golden number. Before that, the life tables predict that his chance of dying was a helluvalot higher than a white male born the same year. I don’t remember the rate, but I do remember the age. Chilling.

@JNOV: You do love a red herring, sometimes.

Okay. Even though it happened in a school in a kindergarten in two rooms in a sleepy safe small town, it would get the same coverage with the same tenor as if it happened in South Central. Okay. I get it. I think you’re higher than a motherfucking kite if you think that’s the case.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: You keep changing your rationalizations.

Sleepy town — so it’s news. <– agreed

Would get the same attention in South Central <– HAHAHAHAHA

@JNOV: How? I keep saying the same thing over and over.

…And that’s what I mean, I don’t agree with you in this specific case. This was huge, and no matter where it happened, it would have been huge news. There, I said it again.

Doesn’t the pitchfork poke you when you put your foot in?

Heh.

So do I! Christ. nojo pointed out that no one gave a damn about the schools that got shot up before Columbine because they were working class and rural. I was agreeing with him. Then you went Den Mother and tried to explain to me what Lefty meant. Okay — so now you both think I’m presupposing their class and race when I’d already read about the fucking town before I wrote my comment in the first place, and because of that I get accused of judging DEAD kids? You are both out of your minds. Shit. I am not blaming those kids.

There’s this word I keep repeating: media. You know, the people that report stuff.

Is this event newsworthy? Yes! It’s horrible! No good will come out of it! Ever! Nothing!

Do all the other kids deserve equal time despite not being gunned down in the same place at the same time and at the same age? Yes! Even adults! Killing people bad! Killing people NOT GOOD!

Christ.

@JNOV: It’s like fireworks every time…

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: You call them “red herrings”; I call them “anecdotes.” Makes my life seem interesting. ;-P

Look, anyone who’s ever been lost in South Central would not be saying, “It’s just incredibly sad having an event like this happen in a place like this.” They’d think, “Just another day in Paradise.”

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: >8C

Congratulations. I am sooooo not riding the teacups with you.

@JNOV: Tee-hee. Com’on honey, just fucking with you. Always so serious, you.

@Tommmcatt May Just Have Some MJ In His System As Well, So What?: Hrmph. You made the blurb. Wanker.

I’m watching Kundun and going to bed. Zazen time.